In the course of the following description, reference will be made to the papers, patents and publications presented in a list of references at the conclusion of this specification. When cited, each listed reference will be identified by a numeral within curly-braces indicating its position within this list.
Humanoid robots and Orthotic and Prosthetic (O&P) robotic appendages that can truly mimic human movement patterns have not yet been developed and necessitate fundamental improvements in hardware and control design {1,2}. For this class of robotic devices it is not meaningful to track a small set of predetermined joint trajectories {3}. Moreover, without an attachment base securely bolted to the ground, postural balance is considered a primary control task {4}.
General, precise and practical formulation of postural stability as a control problem remains elusive {5,6}. Many studies of repetitive motions utilize return map analyses a posteriori to tackle stability in a plant/task/condition (and particular target trajectories) specific manner. However, there are many potential plants, tasks and transitions as well as external world conditions. Hence, it seems beneficial, if not necessary, for an online controller to exploit an on-line biomechanically inspired optimization strategy where joint angle trajectories are varied to achieve whole-body postural balance. In this provisional patent we present several embodiments of biomimetic motion and balance controllers.